Employees get creative in how they give back

Tricia Antonini, an employee at PwC who has volunteered countless hours for various community causes and has been supported by PwC, her employer. Their company made this display to help the Calgary Food Bank on Dec. 3, 2012 in Calgary.

Photograph by: Lorraine Hjalte
, Postmedia News

Employees are getting creative in their approach to philanthropy. Giving strategies are adapting to social media and are no longer seen as a matter of simply writing a cheque - not that charities would refuse that, either.

Take Tricia Antonini. She was diagnosed with leukemia in 1997 at the age of 23 after she had just begun her accounting career with PwC. Over the next 15 years, her involvement with numerous charities began to blossom. Today, she sits on the board of trustees for the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society of Canada and is a volunteer with Alberta Health Service's Strategic Clinical Care Network.

Most recently, her team at PwC created architectural designs in the company's lobby made of canned foods to help raise money and awareness for the Calgary Food Bank.

"My perspective now is not so much about cancer ... it's about having an interesting and potent life," says Antonini, a senior manager with PwC's audit and assurance practice in Calgary.

It's reflective of a generational change that's been taking place over the last few years, according to James Temple, the corporate responsibility director with PwC.

The firm's annual Millen-nials at Work survey shows 60 per cent of millennials say they would consider leaving a company if the organization's corporate responsibility efforts didn't match their own values.

"Corporate responsibility remains a priority for new recruits," Temple says, adding the average age of PwC's workforce is under 30. "Society's expectations are changing. With the emergence of new technologies, particularly social media, we feel that the public conversation is changing."

Knightsbridge Human Capital Solutions launched its Gift of Advice campaign earlier this month as a "pay-it-forward" program that uses social media to solicit advice from its vast network of clients and senior executives to raise $20,000 for the United Way over the holiday.

Instead of lending its in-house expertise to not-for-profits, Knightsbridge is donating $25 for each piece of advice given using LinkedIn on how to be a better business leader through inspiring stories to promote strong leadership development - a resource charities can benefit from.

"Our goal is to leverage the social media platform that our clients are already using to create a space where people can share their advice to benefit the next generation of leaders and the United Way," stated Leslie Carter, vice-president of marketing at Knightsbridge, during the launch earlier this month.

PwC, meanwhile, has also developed a not-for-profit "apprentice" program where its employees, who are trained in-house on not-for-profit board governance, and matched with executives at those organizations to help them develop sound strategies unique to each organization.

PwC has a goal of training 200 accountants to join not-for-profit boards across the country in the next three years because "this is critical," Temple says.

"By giving our employees the right information, tools and resources, they can share their knowledge, but they can also learn so much from the not-for-profit community," Temple adds.

Antonini is active in a variety of volunteering efforts, all of which offer creative and rich learning experiences. "Volunteering is something (where) you need to find out what you're passionate about and how you can get involved," she says. "I see it all the time with clients. When they find out what you've done with a community (organization), they suddenly respect you in a different way."

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Tricia Antonini, an employee at PwC who has volunteered countless hours for various community causes and has been supported by PwC, her employer. Their company made this display to help the Calgary Food Bank on Dec. 3, 2012 in Calgary.

Photograph by: Lorraine Hjalte, Postmedia News

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